I bought the music edition of the XFi card and a set of Logitech 5500 speaker, the 5500 has a coax and an optical input. Unfortunately the music edition does not. It does have a Flexjack which you should be able to use for an optical out, but I cannot find the right part to buy, calling Creative was a waste, I was told to buy the platinum edition if I want to use optical. Any help will be appreciated.
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XFi Xtreme Music and Optical Connection
- Thread starter gutkin
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you need a 1/8" mono miniplug to female coax adapter..
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gutkin said:
Yeah.. radioshack carries them. I tried to copy a link but it just hangs my pc whenever I click on it for some reason. try part Radio Shack #294-897
their website hangs my browser..
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102693&cp
BTW, this will give you a coax connection, not optical.
BTW, this will give you a coax connection, not optical.
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iRoNeTiK said:
yeah.. make sure it's mono though. Here is a pic of mine.
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iRoNeTiK said:
Well.. I bought a stereo one once by accident and it didn't work for me.. your just transferring a digital signal and not left/right analog stereo so mono is what you want. You can usually tell by looking at the tip... there will be only one "ring"
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Mister X said:There is no ring on a mono connector..... the spoon ate it.
you better tell that one to mine then.
aug1516 said:
It's one of those things. It is certainly theoretically possible to do. There is nothing magic about making a Dolby Digital stream (assuming you have a license to), after all.
It's just that most game makers have decided there are better uses for the CPU in a PC than encoding the surround-sound audio to a Dolby Digital stream on the fly.
And so, no games do.
So if i go digital it will not be good for games? On the control console of the z-5500's you can pick stereo, stereo 2x or DTS/dolby blah blah lol...So i guess i just make the "effect" stereo 2x instead of DTS/dolby to get sound out of all speakers (or @ lest 4 of them and sub)?
I know to get true surround you need to use the analog connections on the soundcards, but are any games true 7.1 yet? Or are they all 5.1 and most soundcards just reproduce the signal to 7.1?
The reason I ask is im looking to buy a Pannasonic xr55 receiver that is 7.1, however it only has 5.1 analog in. (along with several digital in's etc.)
The reason I ask is im looking to buy a Pannasonic xr55 receiver that is 7.1, however it only has 5.1 analog in. (along with several digital in's etc.)
iRoNeTiK said:
You can hook up both analog and coaxial from the x-fi to the z-5500. Just switch to 6-CH Direct mode by pressing the "Input" key on your control pod or remote when you want to play games to get true 5.1 and press the "Input" key again to the "Coax" mode when you want to play raw digital streams of DTS or DD to your logitech and let it do the decoding (which you really wouldn't want to do!).
Seeing the X-fi XtremeMusic does do 24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of digital sources at 96kHz to analog 7.1 speaker output using the onboard Cirrus Logic CS4382 D/A converter (192 kHz, 114 dB), wouldn't that mean the digital connection isn't necessary at all when hooking z-5500 to x-fi?? The D/A converter/Decoder on the Logitech Z-5500 is only 16bit as I've read at various places so that makes the X-fi the clear choice for decoding and converting Digital to Analog.
I have one question: will I be able to get the full 5.1 Dobly Digital and DTS sounds from movies/music that have them if I hook up my z-5500 to the x-fi with the 3.5mm analog connectors??
I bought the cable and got it installed yesterday and it worked like a charm, so much with Creative telling me I need to buy the platinum edition to get digital connection. To get all 5 speakers working via Coax Digital and my Z5500 Logitechs, I can put into stereox2 mode, and it seems to spread the sound throw all 5.1 speakers.
Chastity said:
Actually, Wing Commander IV: The Price Of Freedom (starring, among others, Mark Hamill in the second-WORST role of his film and video career) was the first game to support DD-native output on the PC (the original Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 and the original Audigy both allowed for the use of the DD pull-down box in the game's Audio Options settings; however, the Monster Sound MX-300, the Aureal-based competition, did not, as it didn't support DD, though it DID support 5.1 audio). However, until recently, adding DD support in a game was a lot HARDER than simply using DirectSound 3D (or even EAX Advanced HD); worse, sound was not considered that important in PC gaming (despite what had been done with Doom II or even Quake). However, WC IV was VERY widely pilloried in the PC gaming press (mostly due to the sheer size of the game; it came on FIVE CDs in the day when the single-CD game was nearly deemed overkill, and even Windows 98 was widely castigated for NOT being available on floppy disks). I actually BOUGHT WC IV retail and was VERY impressed with the game's audio (while I was not impressed with the non-linear gameplay, the game's audio and the minigame combat sim included DID impress me to the point that I spent LOTS of time in the sim as opposed to trying to play through the main game itself).
dderidex said:
No game has supported native Dolby Digital (in any way, shape, or form) on the PC since Wing Commander IV: The Price Of Freedom (which was WIDELY pilloried in the PC gaming press; however, the game's audio was NOT why); however, VERY few game developers have paid much attention to the audio environment in a game (note how few developers support even DirectSound 3D, let alone EAX, OpenAL, or even Miles 3D, in a non-A-list game). It need not even be encoded *on-the-fly* (WC IV used AC3 encoding, which can be decoded entirely in software, with hardware assistance, or entirely in hardware); however, audio is STILL not widely considered a priority in the game-development process.
aug1516 said:
You are thinking of an external decoder. If the game supports AC3 (Wing Commander IV was the first PC game to do so) then any Sound Blaster 5.1 sound card can decode it directly (theoretically, the NForce audio and Intel HD Audio integrated setups SHOULD be able to do so also, as both are Dolby Digital licensees). The problem with external decoders is that *most* of them are structured to accept either PCM or optical inputs, while most PCs are structured to output only analog audio (or, if they DO output digital audio, it's via S/PDIF).
The entire reason I PREFER to have the PC (as opposed to an external decoder) handle the decoding chores for PC-sourced DD content is to reduce the number of conversion steps between the source (the content) and the destination (my ears).
PGHammer said:
The conversion steps remain the same even with an external decoder. The audio is digital inside the computer so it can either be converted by the sound card to analog or be output via digital and converted by an external decoder. Either way it's only one conversion.
aug1516 said:
plus, if you have an external decoder (full receiver) do the decoding for you you have a lot more control over things.
Also, if you output just stereo mp3s or cds to a receiver using digital coax you have features like dolby pro-logic to utilize, which you would not normally have.
Leright said:
The $0.64USD (sixty-four cents US) question is why WOULDN'T you have that feature in a PC-audio solution that supports Dolby Digital? Dolby Pro Logic is not exactly a separate feature of Dolby Digital (as external decoders have proven for years); the same is still true of PC-based decoding solutions, whether in software, hardware-assisted, or entirely in hardware. Dolby Pro Logic is part of the Dolby Digital process, and like Dolby Digital, must be encoded *into* the signal to be utilized (you may be thinking of one of two completely separate features; one called Dolby Noise Reduction (either type C or type SR) which can be licensed along with Dolby Digital support (however, this feature is usually used in audio recording, not playback, and became popular with cassette recording) or the unlicensed Dynamic Noise Reduction (DNR) which burst onto the scene primarily in car audio). Just how many Pro Logic-encoded MP3s are out there today?
I found a PC-based (as opposed to external) DD solution useful for one major reason (and it isn't MP3s): PC-based TV viewing. Back when HDTV was still being hashed out, the audio side of the forthcoming HDTV standard (whichever of the two formats would prevail) had been pretty much set in stone: stereo audio (in fact, pretty much identical to the existing ATSC audio standard for analog TV) would be the minimal standard, with a then-Dolby AC-3 (later Dolby Digital 5.1) option. Starting in the late 1990s, CBS (and later FOX) would encode most sports and live-event programming in Dolby Digital; naturally, this continued with the adoption of HDTV. I take it you don't watch TV on your PC?
World of WarCraft is in DD Suround sound, and not EAX; so, theoretically one should be able to obtain this discret 6 surround sound source via digital coax to an external receiver having a DD decoder > 5.1 in this game using digital connection from the sound card. Right or Wrong?